Diana Henriques on "A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History"

Lunch and Learn Series

Please note: Due to a flood in the Museum, this event will be held on the 5th Floor of 48 Wall Street. MoAF staff will be on hand to direct attendees.

For decades on Wall Street, “Black Monday” has meant October 19, 1987. Despite the many difficult days since then — the 1998 currency panic, the 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2008 crisis — Black Monday still stands as the worst day in American stock market history. No other crash, not even the historic plunge of 1929, comes close. Black Monday was evidence that a new and frightening era had arrived on Wall Street – one in which computer power, human ingenuity and herd instincts all combined to form a juggernaut that is rumbling unpredictably through the markets to this day.

But Wall Street itself has been far too quick to forget the urgent lessons revealed by the road to Black Monday — lessons even more relevant in the global computerized markets of today. In A First-Class Catastrophe, author and journalist Diana Henriques brings those harrowing days to life and excavates their overlooked but still relevant warnings for future generations.